Misgivings: My Mother, My Father, Myself

An intense, refractory memoir by a major poet

Misgivings is C. K. Williams's searing recollection of his family's extreme dynamics and of his parents' deaths after years of struggle, bitterness, and inner conflict. Like Kafka's self-revealing Letter to His Father, Misgivings is full of doubt, both philosophical and personal, but as a work of art it is sure and true.
Williams's father was an "ordinary businessman"--angry, demanding, addicted to the tension he created wit…